FEMINIST LETTER NO 6
To all feminists
Discussions continue as to the future shape of parental leave. Parents are contributing articles to the papers and several unions have presented reports or made their viewpoints known. This is a good thing, since discussions are currently going on between the government and its supporting parties the Left Party(V) and the Environmental Party(MP) on how the directives should be formulated to the commission now being set up over this issue. The minister in charge is conspicuously unwilling or incapable of freeing herself of patriarchal family patterns. So debate is called for, and more of it!But it worries me when the discussion is carried on in terms of remuneration and the number of months to be allotted to either parent. The Trade Union Confederation (LO) would like to see a settlement where each parent is allotted one third of the time, the last third to be divided as the couple wish. The Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) gives priority to the issue of fair distribution of income. This is all well and good, but leads in the wrong direction, i.e. to a discussion concerned with how months and money should be shared, instead of focusing on parenthood.
The starting point must be that parenthood is optional, both for women and men. Parenthood is a relationship for life. A relationship has to be mutual in order to develop and a relationship can only be 100%. A relationship feeds on presence. I may cope well or not so well with any relationship but I can never renounce responsibility for it through “bargaining “ or “transfering” it to somebody else. No one else can express my feelings instead of me and no one else can receive feelings meant for me.
Another obvious starting point must be that every adult who chooses to become a parent chooses at the same time to earn a living. A job that provides us with a wage to support ourselves is the basis for our independence, whether we are women or men. Nowhere do I see indications that the ideal of the housewife is on its way back in! To make the combination of parenthood and employment work as well as possible, we need a system of parental leave based on the same principles as other social security systems; that is to say it needs to be individually based and work on the principle of loss of income. This must be our prime consideration if we are ever to get away from the patriarchal view, specially cherished by employers, that children are the responsibility of women and the spare time activity of men.
By international standards we have a relatively generous system of parental leave, which without alterations is well adapted to individualisation. In several other European countries it might be more difficult, as in Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, where compensation is paid only for 3-4 months. In Norway, Finland and Denmark it varies between 9 and 12 months, with or without a month or months reserved for the father. Iceland has 3 months for the father, 3 for the mother and 3 to be negotiated at the kitchen table.
If I had the means, I would commission an opinion poll institute to question, not the parents who are in the middle of their parental leave, but those parents who have already left this stage of their lives behind, that is those who have experience of how things turned out, later. I would like to ask women over the age of 55 how it all turned out. What were the consequences of your taking the lion’s share of parental leave? What happened at work, with your wage, with your career? What happened in the relationship with the children? And in the relationship with the father? I would like to ask the father the same questions. What happened at work and what happened in life and with your closest relationships? What happened to love? Would you (both) choose the same way if you had to make the choice a second time? Did you feel there was a free choice? And I would like to ask the grown up children. What was it like? What kind of relationships did you have with the parents? Looking back, do you wish you had had a different family pattern? And how have your own choices in life been affected by the choices made by your parents?
Until such time as this exciting opinion poll is available, we need to exert pressure at all levels, articles and letters to the editor, meetings, debates and discussions. For suggestions and ideas, do get in touch.
I would like to round off with the following:
JämO (the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman) has rewarded a student paper written at the Department of Education at the university college of Kalmar. The title is “ Everything should be equal for everyone, so to speak…A study through interviews of how student teachers perceive gender and equal opportunities, by Maria Hedin. The paper is recommended for reading at all courses of teacher training.
The purpose of the study is to elucidate how a group of student teachers understand the concepts of gender and equal rights and how their ideas relate to the objectives of the educational system and the work teachers do. At a spontaneous level those who are being interviewed agree that “girls and boys should be treated equally”. But what is advocated on a theoretical level is not translated into practice when the students discuss real situations. Contradictions and inconsistencies come to the surface. It becomes clear that the students are unaware of the gender structures in society and of the gender objectives of the educational system.
JämOs motivation for its reward reads as follows:
“JämO has for several years been working to formulate methods for active gender education in schools. It has become increasingly clear that the roll played by the teacher is the key factor in achieving –or in obstructing- gender equality for children and pupils in schools. Maria Hedin’s paper shows us convincingly what basic problems are involved in the role played by the teacher and the way teachers are trained. The study should in future be used as a method book at departments of education throughout the country.
The University College of Kalmar is publishing the study as a report and it can be ordered via the department secretary at the Department for Health and Behavioural Science. Tel:
0480-44 67 60 or via e.mail: marie.danielsson@hik.se
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